Barcodes provide a convenient way to convey electronic information through a variety of electronic devices. A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data which, for example, shows data about the object to which it is attached. Traditionally, barcodes have represented data by varying the widths and spacing of parallel dark lines; these barcodes are often referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D) barcodes. One-dimensional barcodes are scanned in a one-dimensional fashion by special-purpose optical scanning devices that are able to decode the information encoded in the barcodes; decoding of the information may be performed by measuring the widths and spacing of the parallel barcode lines through reflective light feedback.
One-dimensional barcodes, however, are very limited in the amount of information that can be encoded in the widths and spacing of the parallel barcode lines. Because of this limitation, there has been growth in the usage of two-dimensional (2D) barcodes, or matrix barcodes. One example of the type of matrix barcode that has enjoyed popular usage is the Quick Response (QR) code. Various versions of QR codes are capable of storing many bytes of data, when encoding binary data.
Once common use of QR codes has been to encode Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), such as website addresses. Such QR codes are often placed on billboards or mailers to provide consumers with a quick and easy way to visit a company's website, without having to memorize, write down, or manually type a URL into a smartphone or other mobile device. Consumers who see a QR code displayed may take a picture of the QR code, using a camera embedded in the smartphone, and may utilize a smartphone Application to automatically translate the QR code into a URL; the smartphone Application may then launch a browser pointed to the URL.
Turning now to gas cylinders, a tag or label is typically placed on the cylinder to identify the gas product in the cylinder. The tag or label, generally, includes much information, such as the gas cylinder product identification number, the date the gas cylinder was filled, the type of gas and mixture ratios in the cylinder, the quality of gas in the cylinder, the date the gas cylinder was tested, and so on. Customers, typically, request a Certificate of Analysis (COA) that includes information that satisfies regulatory requirements, such as EPA protocol standards. Since the COA includes a variety of data, errors are often made by customers, upon receiving the gas cylinders, as they transcribe the variety of data into various reporting systems, or databases. In general, transcribing and re-keying the cylinder data prompts errors, and causes excessive administrative time for simply shifting data from one program, or storage location to another.
As will be described, the present invention provides a system and method to capture and transfer pertinent information onto a gas cylinder using a QR code. In addition, the present invention provides a system and method to shift the pertinent information to a customer's database, or to a third party, without any transcription errors.
It is understood that the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary, but are not restrictive, of the invention.